Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers Sean McDade and
Randy Buffam set out in January 2000 on an eight-month secret
investigation in the United States. The two were attempting to
determine whether Canada's law-enforcement and intelligence
agencies were using an allegedly pirated software program called
PROMIS that had been modified to be monitorable by shadowy
interests said to have the electronic key; and, if so, whether
Canada's national security had been compromised because of the
suspected electronic backdoors installed in the software. Much of
the Mounties' investigation focused on the reported activities
and relationships of Michael Riconosciuto, a computer wizard who
claimed to have modified the PROMIS software for illegal use.

A convicted felon, Riconosciuto also claimed knowledge of a
compendium of suspicious characters and activities that include:
cArms development for an alleged joint venture between the
Cabazon Indians of Indio, Calif., and the Wackenhut Corp.; cA
former high-ranking Justice Department attorney named Mike Abbell
and his alleged relationship with the Cali drug cartel; and
cRiconosciuto's own activity as an undercover operative in a Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA) sting operation in Lebanon.
Insight has followed the trail of the two RCMP investigators as
they moved secretly throughout the United States collecting hard
data from a variety of sources and interviewing witnesses,
including Riconosciuto.

They ultimately returned to Canada to continue their
still-secret national-security probe that raises troubling
questions about international espionage, crime and scandalous
cover-ups said to date back more than a decade. In this second
installment of an exclusive four-part series, Insight focuses on
Riconosciuto, on whom the RCMP investigators invested so much
time, expense and effort to examine and try to confirm his
shocking stories. By following the Mounties, Insight has
assembled new information that sheds light on the shadowy world
in which Riconosciuto operated and what the RCMP found -
including long-sought computer tapes that Riconosciuto has said
contain a version of PROMIS that was stolen by high-level U.S.
government officials and that he then modified for illegal
purposes. This was not the first time such claims had been made.

Before the RCMP got involved, a great deal of this information
was provided to Congress (among others) and surfaced during a
1992 taped telephone conversation between Riconosciuto and an FBI
agent at a time Riconosciuto was on trial for the manufacture and
sale of methamphetamine and was attempting to trade information
to the FBI in exchange for entry to the federal Witness
Protection Program. But, as so often with Riconosciuto, the
stories he offered to federal agents were not confirmed or just
ignored. That is, until the RCMP entered the picture last year
and got a break. Helping the Mounties was Cheri Seymour, a
Southern California journalist turned private detective. Years
before, in January 1992, she had retrieved boxes of documents
from Riconosciuto's hidden desert trailer. The Mounties spent
three days copying these documents and, with the help of Seymour,
returned to the trailer where yet more documents were retrieved.
These combined Riconosciuto papers revealed the dark and
disturbing landscape of crime, espionage and betrayal of which he
had been part - one that ever since his arrest and conviction in
1992 had been labeled the fictional embellishments of a convicted
felon.

Each new twist and turn of the covert investigation took the
Mounties deeper into a forest of bizarre machinations as they
sought to validate information which, though it had no direct
connection to the alleged theft of the PROMIS software, raised
astonishing questions about national security and organized
crime. This is not to say the RCMP agents didn't probe the
allegations that Canada's law-enforcement and intelligence
services were operating a stolen version of the software
developed years before by Bill and Nancy Hamilton. The Hamiltons
own a company called Inslaw, and it is they who, in the early
1970s, developed a version of PROMIS for the Justice Department.
At some point, they have claimed, a proprietary version of their
software was stolen and a dispute arose with the government. In
March 1991, just before Riconosciuto was arrested on illegal drug
charges, he provided a sworn affidavit to Inslaw stating that
between 1981 and 1983 he had made modifications to a pirated
version of PROMIS. He told Inslaw, and subsequently Congress and
federal investigators, that he did so when he was director of
research for a joint venture between the Cabazon Indians and the
Wackenhut Corp.

At the time, there were fewer than two dozen members of the
Cabazon Band of Mission Indians. John Nichols, who is not an
American Indian, was the administrator of the tribe's business
affairs, which included the joint-venture partnership with
Wackenhut, one of the top private security agencies in the world,
run by former FBI and other intelligence specialists. The Indian
reservation presented unique opportunities for secrecy, according
to interviews and documents obtained by Insight. Under broad
state and federal exemptions, Indian reservations enjoy status
just short of being sovereign nations and are free to govern
within the confines of the reservation without outside
intervention. Wackenhut was one of the first corporations to take
advantage of this special status. Whether the Cabazon/Wackenhut
"joint venture" existed is not in question. What have
been dismissed by federal investigators are Riconosciuto's claims
about what went on at the reservation and the people involved.

For example, Riconosciuto has maintained that one of the
projects he was involved in dealt with new munitions he and the
Cabazon/Wackenhut partnership had created, not to mention a nifty
new night-vision device. RCMP officers McDade and Buffam obtained
a copy of a 1991 "Special Operations Report" (SOP) that
was written by Gene Gilbert, an investigator for the district
attorney's office in Riverside, Calif. In this report - a copy of
which was given to the House Judiciary Committee in 1991 and
subsequently to the Justice Department in 1993 - Gilbert
describes a weapons demonstration that took place in September
1981 at the Lake Cahuilla Shooting Range in Indio, Calif. Details
of who attended this test nearly 20 years ago, Riconosciuto
claims, should corroborate his assertions about people he
associated with involved in the alleged theft of the PROMIS
software and other activities in which the RCMP officers now are
probing. U.S. federal investigators dismissed the report because,
they said, the document was a re-creation of 10-year-old events
based on recollections Gilbert had cobbled together at the
request of federal authorities.

The RCMP officers traveled to Riverside in August 2000 to see
for themselves. According to a law-enforcement officer who asked
not to be identified, Gilbert not only verified the information
in his 1991 SOP report but allowed the Mounties to review all the
contemporaneous backup in local police-department files
associated with the weapons demonstration and other activities at
the reservation. Insight has obtained some of these crucial 1980s
police-intelligence files which Gilbert used for his 1991 SOP
report. And these confirm that there was a demonstration in 1981
consisting of tests for a new night-vision device and a firing of
special semiautomatic weapons. The records show it was attended
by Riconosciuto and 15 others - including two anticommunist
Nicaraguan freedom fighters identified as Eden Pastora Gomez
(code-named "Commander Zero") and Jose Curdel
("Commander Alpha"); John Vanderworker, a former CIA
employee; Wayne Reeder, a wealthy California developer and
investor in the Cabazon Reservation; Peter Zokosky, a board
member of Meridian International Logistics who also was a Cabazon
investor and former owner of Armtec Defense Products Inc.; and
John Philip Nichols, administrator of Cabazon, to name a few.

This is not the only story that emerged as the RCMP
investigated Riconosciuto's revelations. For instance, for years
he had said he'd worked for the government, briefing and
lecturing military brass and Pentagon officials. In a January
1992 letter obtained by Insight on Wackenhut stationery, the
company's director of corporate relations, Patrick Cannan, writes
that "John P. Nichols had first introduced Riconosciuto to
Wackenhut (Frye, V.P. of Wackenhut, Indio, Ca., office) on a May
1981 trip to the U.S. Army installation at Dover, N.J., where
Nichols, Zokosky, Frye and Riconosciuto met with Dr. Harry Fair
and several of his Army associates who were the project engineers
on the Railgun Project. Riconosciuto and these Army personnel
conducted an extensive and highly technical `theoretical'
blackboard exercise on the Railgun and, afterward, Dr. Fair
commented that he was extremely impressed with Riconosciuto's
scientific and technical knowledge in this matter."

The letter goes on to state that Dr. Fair considered
Riconosciuto a "potential national resource." The
significance of this is that it is consistent with evidence
unearthed by RCMP investigators that Riconosciuto's claims of
technical and scientific expertise and access are not rantings.
The RCMP investigators also discovered another link in a
Riconosciuto story that had been dismissed. The permit to hold
the arms demonstration in 1981 at Lake Cahuilla was obtained by
Meridian Arms, a subsidiary of Meridian International Logistics,
owned by Robert Booth Nichols, a self-proclaimed CIA operative
and licensed arms dealer (and no relation to Cabazon
administrator John Nichols). Riconosciuto for years was a partner
with Booth Nichols in the Meridian Arms business and, at the time
the permits were approved for the Lake Cahuilla weapons
demonstration, Nichols was unaware that he was being investigated
by the FBI for suspected mob-related money laundering of drug
profits and for stock fraud.

Booth Nichols also served on the board of First
Intercontinental Development Corp. (FIDCO), a
building/construction company. Among Nichols' corporate partners
at FIDCO in the 1980s were Michael McManus, then an aide to
President Reagan; Robert Maheu, former chief executive officer of
Howard Hughes Enterprises; and Clint Murchison Jr. of the
Murchison empire based in Dallas. Riconosciuto long has
maintained that Booth Nichols and FIDCO were associated with U.S.
intelligence agencies and used as a cutout. Again, whereas others
summarily had dismissed this claim, the RCMP investigators
pursued the lead, poring over documents from the long-abandoned
Riconosciuto storage and in the files of U.S. law-enforcement
agencies. For example, RCMP obtained FBI wiretap summaries of
telephone conversations between Nichols and another of his
then-partners in FIDCO, Eugene Giaquinto, who at the same time
also was president of MCA Home Entertainment Division.

The wiretap summaries reads like a who's who of alleged mob
figures with close ties to the motion-picture industry. The
Mounties also received substantial related information from
classified internal FBI files. But, based on Insight's own
sources, what the RCMP investigators were after wasn't just
PROMIS but people associated with Riconosciuto and their business
ties in a vast array of enterprises that include intelligence
activities overseas. Somehow, this network was tied in to what
the Mounties were investigating involving security lapses such as
those at the Los Alamos National Laboratory last year that McDade
and Buffam knew about - and shared with Seymour and others -
months before the news hit U.S. newspapers. And it appeared that
Riconosciuto and his cronies were in the thick of such
international intrigue - especially Booth Nichols.

In response to RCMP requests to help to corroborate
Riconosciuto's claims and connections to Booth Nichols, Seymour
provided McDade a January 1992 recording of a telephone
conversation between Riconosciuto and an FBI agent. From this
tape McDade heard Riconosciuto claim that Booth Nichols was
connected to a high-ranking Justice Department official.
Riconosciuto also tells the FBI agent that "the bottom line
here is Bob [Nichols], Gilberto Rodriguez, Michael Abbell [who's
now an attorney in Washington but then was with the Criminal
Section of the Justice Department], Harold Okimoto, Jose Londono
and Glen Shockley are all in bed together." Riconosciuto
also details in the tape-recorded phone call specific information
about an alleged meeting between Booth Nichols and Abbell.

He subsequently provided the FBI agent a handwritten note with
additional information about the alleged Abbell meeting:
"Bob [Nichols] handed him [Abbell] $50,000 cash to handle an
internal-affairs investigation the Department of Justice was
having that would lead to extradition of [brothers] Gilberto and
Miguel Rodriguez and Jose Londono. Bob said it was necessary to
`crowbar' the investigation because they were `intelligence'
people." What is significant, and of interest to the
Mounties, is that Riconosciuto fingered Abbell's ties to the Cali
drug cartel three years before Abbell was indicted in Miami on
federal criminal charges that the former official did work on
behalf of the Cali cartel and its leaders. (Abbell was convicted
of money laundering in July 1998 and sentenced to seven years in
prison.) Interestingly enough, once McDade returned to Canada
with tapes of a dozen telephone conversations and his secret
investigation began to leak in the Canadian press (albeit
briefly), he mailed to Seymour a transcript of the Riconosciuto
taped conversation with the FBI agent. Was this a message?

The Mounties clearly were interested in Riconosciuto's partner
of nearly 20 years, Booth Nichols. This connection was strange,
according to those interviewed by Insight, because Booth Nichols
apparently had nothing to do with PROMIS and everything to do
with other more nefarious allegations. And the Mounties also were
interested in claims Riconosciuto has made about his
participation in a DEA drug-sting operation in Cyprus. In one of
the taped interviews Riconosciuto had with the FBI agent, he says
that he was in Lebanon working on "communications
protocol" for FIDCO in the Middle East to rebuild the
infrastructure of two cities in Lebanon. Why the RCMP would be
interested in this additional twist in the intrigue is unknown,
but Insight has obtained documents that support the convicted
felon's claims here as well.

A June 1983 letter from Michael McManus Jr., the Reagan
assistant who also sat on the FIDCO board, to George Pender,
president of FIDCO, describes the administration's support for
the rebuilding of Lebanon: "Without question FIDCO seems to
have a considerable role to offer, particularly in the massive
financial participation being made available to the government of
Lebanon." There also is a July 1983 letter to the president
of Lebanon, Amin Gemayel, from Pender in which FIDCO's desire to
participate in the rebuilding of Lebanon is discussed. What is
interesting about this letter is that Pender advises the Lebanese
president that he (Pender) "may be reached via telex 652483
RBN Assocs. LSA." And whose address is that? None other than
Booth Nichols. The same Nichols who at the time was a board
member of FIDCO and under investigation by the FBI for suspected
drug trafficking, money laundering and connections to the mob -
and the same man who obtained the permits at the Cahuilla gun
range for the weapons demonstration to Nicaraguan Contra leaders
and others.

The more the Mounties dug, the weirder the connections got and
the more the convicted felon's stories of the bizarre underground
seemed to be borne out. Besides its interest in the RCMP probe
and what it was uncovering, Insight also sought - and confirmed -
the details of many other Riconosciuto accounts of these
intrigues. Riconosciuto has said he was involved in that DEA
drug-sting operation in the Middle East while he was working on
communications protocol for FIDCO. What part he played in any
alleged sting operation is unknown but, based on what
Riconosciuto told the FBI agent in those taped conversations,
detailed information about a safe house used by the DEA in Cyprus
seems accurate. According to Riconosciuto, the DEA safe house was
located in Nicosia, Cyprus, and operated under the code name of
Eurame Trading Ltd., which was located on Collumbra Street.
"It was an apartment and it had a ham-radio station. It was
ICOM," Riconosciuto said, "a single side-band amateur
radio setup. It [the apartment] was on the top floor."

There is corroboration for these details. Lester Coleman, a
former contract employee with the Defense Intelligence Agency
(DIA) who was on loan to the DEA in the late 1980s, wrote a book
in 1993 called Trail of the Octopus: From Beirut to Lockerbie,
Inside the DIA. Coleman claims there to have worked out of a safe
house in Cyprus at the same location Riconosciuto described and
under the same name, Eurame Trading Ltd. Coleman also confirmed
secret Beka Valley drug shipments and the names of the U.S.
agents working undercover in Cyprus that Riconosciuto had
revealed to the FBI in 1992 - a year before it was outlined in
Coleman's book. Insight asked Coleman who would know about such a
secret U.S. government safe house, let alone a cutout company?
"I don't know," Coleman says, "unless he was
there. i I have never met or talked with [Riconosciuto], so I
have no idea whether he was there or not. i But what he is
describing is accurate. No one would know about the ICOM radio
unless they had been there and seen it," Coleman says.
Again, like Riconosciuto's comments about Justice Department
attorney Abbell and his connections to the Cali drug cartel,
Riconosciuto knew detailed information well before the public.
And he tried to tell the FBI, among others, but to no avail.

The stories then seemed too wild and woolly to be credible.
But they were credible to these RCMP investigators, who spent
considerable time, effort and money to prove or disprove what
Riconosciuto has been saying. So clearly did this key source for
their original inquiry into the alleged theft and misuse of the
PROMIS software lead the RCMP afield that one must wonder why. Is
it possible that the Canadian investigators focused so much
interest on these associates and tales by Riconosciuto to test
his credibility about allied espionage matters and PROMIS? No one
is talking about what the RCMP probe ultimately was after or what
was taken back to Canada, let alone McDade. However, according to
RCMP spokesman Michelle Gaudet, this investigation is
"ongoing within the national-security perspective." To
be continued next week.